The present disclosure is generally related to gaming systems, and in particular to data communication in a gaming system.
A typical casino gaming system may include a plurality of gaming machines communicatively connected to a server or workstation via a network. The gaming machines may exchange data with the server and/or with other gaming machines via the network. For example, the gaming machines may send data to the server relating to the operation of the gaming units. Such data may include the dollar amount and number of wagers being made on each of the gaming machines and data indicative of how much each of the gaming machines is paying out in winnings.
Techniques for sharing data via networks in a consistent way have been developed. For example, various languages and standards for exchanging formatted data currently exist such as the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the Extensible Markup Language (XML). In HTML and XML, the formatted data includes formatting information that may indicate, for example, how data is to be displayed, how data is to be printed via a printer, how a person or computing system may interact with the data, what type of data is included, etc. In particular, the formatted data includes formatting symbols (“tags”) that convey the formatting information.
An example of data formatted according to XML is provided below:                <first-name>George</first-name>        <last-name>Costanza</last-name>In this example, the data itself comprises the text “George Costanza.” The formatting tags “<first-name>” and “</first-name>” bracket the text “George” indicating that it is a person's first name. Similarly, the formatting tags “<last-name>” and “</last-name>” bracket the text “Costanza” indicating that it is a last name. Another example of data formatted according to XML is:        <first-name age=“37”>George</first-name>        <last-name>Costanza</last-name>In this example, “age” is an attribute associated with the formatting tag “<first-name>”, and the attribute “age” indicates that the person is 37 years old.        
As can be seen in these examples, a majority of the text in the formatted data comprises formatting tags and attributes. Thus, with large amounts of data, formatting information may add significantly to the size of the data, and more storage, longer transmission times, more communication capacity, etc., may be needed as a result.
Further techniques have been developed to reduce the size of data formatted according to XML. For example, one technique involves encoding formatting tags in the formatted data into binary representations of the tags. The binary representations of the tags are much smaller in size than the formatting tags themselves and thus memory and/or bandwidth requirements may be reduced.